


The Stories We Told In The Dark

by smbh



Series: Space Witches [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Magic, Monster of the Week, Mystery, Original Slash, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Space Opera, Worldbuilding, casefic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:35:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 20,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25129396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smbh/pseuds/smbh
Summary: The planet Tellus is dying and humanity’s last hope is finding other planets that are capable of sustaining human life. Valentine is one of many orphans who were forced into a state program and experimented upon to enhance their strength, intelligence, and magical capabilities. They have been chosen to lead humanity out into space, guiding and protecting them as they gather resources and rebuild their population so that they may someday return home.But the very procedures meant to prepare them for the challenges ahead cause them to become despised and feared and looked upon as something monstrous.***The original inspiration/title for this was Space Witches, Bitches. My brain got stuck on the idea of "what if witches, but in space?" And then this turned into one big mashup of all the tropes that I love. The MC falls in love with his childhood friend, there's a central conflict & push/pull to where the science & magic overlap - I love victorian stories where scienceismagic in a way. There's a bit of noir detective to this, monster of the week/casefic, a drop of space opera, and so on.
Series: Space Witches [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871449
Kudos: 2





	1. Goodbye

Valentine’s heart breaks the day Gee runs up to him bursting with excitement, his eyes glowing an unnatural gold, like sunlight through amber instead of their usual black-brown. Gee half tackles, half hugs him, crushing him to his chest as he picks Valentine up and jubilantly swings him around. If this was any other day or any other time, Valentine would be making half hearted protests by now, whacking him on the shoulders and trying to wriggle out of his grasp, demanding to be put back down.

  
One of the last procedures performed on participants in the DEXO program in preparation for their exodus into space has the noted and curious side effect of permanently changing a person’s eye color. The process involves exposing them to massive doses of radiation and magic. It’s a preventative measure to keep all their augmentations from mutating the wrong way, spiraling out of control and turning them into monsters.

  
It’s not foolproof but it will give them a solid base of protection against whatever they might run into as they flee the only planet they’ve ever known. It will be the turning point in their lives, the one thing that will definitively set them apart as _other_ and not entirely human anymore. They will no longer be able to hide how they’ve been changed. 

  
“They set a date! I’m shipping out!” Gee shouts right into Valentine’s ear, still clutching him tight. “And I got ranked as first class!” It is objectively good news, the best news really. Almost everyone in the program will ship out sooner or later but to receive a ranking of first class means that Gee will have one of the highest positions of authority on both his flight out and the future settlement he’ll be a part of despite the fact that he’s not yet out of his teens.

  
Valentine can’t breathe and he’s not sure if it’s just because Gee still doesn’t know his own augmented strength or it’s the crushing realization that he’s run out of time. Valentine has no hope of catching up to him now and his best and only friend is leaving him behind. He’s run himself ragged and taken unthinkable risks so that they could ship out together. He’s done everything he could so that whatever their uncertain future held he wouldn’t have to face it alone. It wasn’t enough.

  
Finally sensing that something’s wrong, Gee sets him down far more gently than he’d picked him up. His strange new eyes meet Valentine’s, filled with concern.

  
“Val?”

  
Valentine clenches his jaw and his face grows hot in a desperate bid to keep already formed tears from falling. He’s not going to cry. He won’t. Gee’s smile falters, and he gets that pitying look that Valentine absolutely can’t stand, especially not today.

  
“Oh, Val.”

  
Tears spill down his face and the disappointment of once again coming up short and the humiliation of his best friend feeling sorry for him is just too much to bear. Gee moves forward to give him another hug and Valentine lashes out, hitting his chest with both palms flat, shoving for all he’s worth. He turns. He runs.

  
His lungs are on fire and his throat’s raw and he can’t stop the tears and all he can taste is salt.

  
At some point he body slams his way out an alarmed door and he can hear the alarm and raised voices but it’s all just background noise beyond the slap of his shoes on the pavement and his gasping hitched breathing. He trips over his own feet, skins his knees, his palms.

  
He gets lectured in the infirmary as they debride and disinfect his wounds but he’s miles outside his own body and despite the pain it all feels like it’s happening to someone else, some other poor fucker that just seems doomed to be alone.  
He’s told he’s confined to quarters and he doesn’t care, the whole place is a prison anyway. The only thing that made it tolerable was Gee, and Gee—

  
Gee ships out before Valentine’s confinement is over; he doesn’t get to say goodbye.


	2. DEXO

Valentine doesn’t remember his parents. As much as he tries, the farthest back he can remember is the orphanage. Those were the last days of Tellus and he was just one of many unwanted children, not entirely abandoned but with dwindling resources and a lack of people who were still willing to look out for others it was a miracle he had a home at all. The planet was dying, polluted and resources depleted from overpopulation which was sharply overcorrecting with an uptick in natural disasters. Its last defense was a desperate attempt to shrug them off and it was working.

  
He lived at the orphanage until he was selected by the planetwide agency responsible for training and providing paranormal support on the Ark Project. The Ark Project was humanity’s last ditch effort to save the species, a plan for abandoning Tellus in search of planets that were within reach that could possibly sustain human life. All resources were being diverted to constructing and supplying the ships that would take them on this journey.

  
Paranormal support was the stuffy official term the government types used to avoid words like magic or ghosts or spirits or monsters or anything else that didn’t fit neatly into a scientifically quantifiable box. In the earliest days of the Ark Project there were many challenges and failures to overcome but despite the original intent to keep things strictly scientific it had become harder and harder to deny one glaring oversight. Wherever there were people, there were spirits, ghosts and what some would even call gods. And so some of the best equipped ships, full of the best and brightest humanity had to offer were amongst some of the least successful at both selecting a decent planet and at establishing settlements. Meanwhile some of the most meagerly outfitted, the most unlikely to succeed had flourished, because they had brought with them their spiritualists, their witches, their fortune tellers, their ghost hunters, their diviners and their alchemists.

  
The Department of the Extra Ordinary, DEXO for short, had been formed and it was an odd sort of collaboration between top scientists and the few spiritualists willing to work with them. Spiritualists, the inadequately descriptive yet all too necessary blanket term applied to all who worked with magic, were an unorganized bunch to begin with. The idea of working hand in hand with a bunch of skeptics was grossly unpalatable to most but a bit of guilt tripping and strategically applied arm twisting had convinced a handful of them to cooperate. The result of this collaboration was the development of a program for enhancing average people to become a sort of super spiritualist. They would be preternaturally hardy and intelligent and long lived, well suited for their role as problem solving prognosticators, capable of anticipating and handling any and all problems that arose that your average human could not.

  
Unsurprisingly there was a chronic shortage of volunteers willing to undergo this process. In the fledgeling days of the program DEXO was just barely able to keep up with demand by offering monetary compensation to participate. As the continued deterioration of the planet caused currencies to gradually lose all purpose and anything else of value was being directly funneled into the Ark Program they were eventually forced to come up with alternate solutions. One such solution was the offer to commute sentences of nonviolent criminals in exchange for their participation. That worked quite well for a time but as the program ramped up the number of nonviolent criminals that hadn’t already been conscripted to one aspect or another of the Ark Program dwindled.

  
In those later, more desperate days the vast and growing numbers of unwanted and abandoned children were brought up as a possible solution. Objectively speaking they were a drain on society and legally speaking they were already wards of their respective states. If humanity was to be saved then all who were capable should ideally participate. The question of commuting the sentences of violent criminals was raised as a counter proposal several times but in the end children won out, by simple virtue of being more malleable and more widely available.

  
And so Valentine had been scooped up by bland faced government drones and whisked away to DEXO where he would undergo a series of surgeries and therapies and experimental procedures designed to enhance his senses and harden his body for the rigors of being a Paranormal Investigator.

  
It is a confusing, uncertain time for him. The orphanage hadn’t been great, it was overcrowded and understaffed and undersupplied but he’d mostly been left to his own devices as long as he had behaved himself. He’d got on well enough with the other children, playing at being space pirates most days, turning the play yard into a battlefield in which campaigns were waged, won, and lost.

  
The DEXO compound he is taken to is a military facility. Soldiers guard the gates, the walls are high and crowned with barbed wire. Intake is done in the medical wing, all cold steel surfaces and flimsy plastic curtain dividers and overworked, dead eyed staff in scrubs that poke and prod and measure and take samples. There’s rounds of injections and inoculations and Valentine wants to make them stop but he’s already seen what happens to the children that don’t cooperate, strapped down to gurneys and if they continue to fuss, wheeled away to who knows where.

  
His first night he’s handed a pillow and a thin blanket and there’s no mattress only the concrete floor. He crams in with all the rest of the children, piled in like sardines. The bunks are on backorder, the adults say. They’ll be here in a week.  
It takes a month to get the bunks in and installed. There’s more blankets scrounged up in the meantime, a motley assortment of handmade and store bought, some brand new and some worn through and frayed around the edges. The children make little nests and it’s almost like the nights the air-conditioning had been on the fritz at the orphanage and they’d all slept out in the play yard, under the stars. They’re not allowed to make noise past curfew but they whisper to each other softly anyway, clutching each other’s hands for comfort.

  
He goes through rounds and rounds of testing. They want to know how well he hears, how well he can see. They ask him if he knows his name, if he’s got more than just the one. Does he have parents, who were they. Where is he from. Does he know his numbers, his colors, his letters, does he know how to read. He does not. They frown and ask him how old he is again. He does not know.

  
The children are separated into groups. Those that are in markedly poor physical shape are sent on to other facilities. Those that remain are sorted according to physical condition and the amount of schooling they’ve received. Valentine very nearly washes out but he makes it into the last group by the skin of his teeth as he is uneducated and undersized for what is estimated to be his age.

  
There is much the public does not know about DEXO, and those who run the organization would say that this is done deliberately as a favor to them. DEXO provides something essential for the survival of humanity but knowledge of the specific processes involved is best left to those with strong constitutions and flexible morals.

  
The medical side of things has been refined considerably in the decade that the program has been running. The survival rate of participants was initially very low but that was only to be expected with something so experimental. The survival rate is now roughly 60% which while far from ideal falls within acceptable parameters for losses. There is hope that children will prove to be more resilient, as the process so far has only been performed upon adults.

  
Valentine’s group is chosen as the first to begin the initial round of medical procedures that will enhance their bodies and minds. Since they are the weakest of the lot losses will most likely be higher amongst this group but it should have minimal impact on the program as a whole. It would be best to discover any potential issues with the least valuable assets.


	3. Karma

Valentine doesn’t remember much else of his early days at DEXO. He remembers the ceiling of the medical wing, water stained panels with tiny holes like reverse stars. The rails of the hospital bed, cold to the touch. The weight of blankets and the hot itchy ache of healing incisions. He knows that most of the others who went first didn’t make it, and he still might not.  
There’s whispered conversations over his head while his dressings are changed and he’s only half conscious, about whether or not it was right to do such things to children and if it might be best if he didn’t make it through after all. He thinks, _I don’t want to die_.

  
Eventually he’s released back to the dorms and they’re much less crowded than the last time he was there. His arms and legs are weak and shaky and feel like they belong to someone else, his coordination and responsiveness gone to shit. He sleeps and sleeps and is prodded awake to eat bland rations and shuffle around the exercise yard with the others who have managed to survive their own procedures so far. He has check ins with a nurse who clucks disapprovingly at how slow he is healing. She has an oppressively long list of tests to see if any of his augmentations have kicked in yet.

The other children are frightened by his scars and his lethargy and thousand yard stare. They keep their distance and it might upset him if only he could muster the energy or will to care.

  
He recovers enough to receive his class assignment. He’s never had any traditional schooling so he’s in a remedial group until he’s learned how to read and write and perform basic math. From there he’ll be switched to regular classes which will prepare him for his future role as a Paranormal Investigator.

  
Even though he’s far behind the other children Valentine finds himself catching up with alarming speed. His memory is incredible; he can recall anything after seeing it once and he learns to read almost overnight. It’s like a whole new world has opened up to him where he understands so much more than he ever did before. There’s signs all over the facility that he can now read and while most of them are plans for emergency exits or notices of being recorded or that a door’s got an alarm on it, it’s all new information to him. He could read his chart now, see what they haven’t told him. He could read the other children’s charts. He could potentially learn what’s in store for them all, assuming someone wrote down the master plan for DEXO and he somehow managed to access it.

  
He’s given a battered and scuffed tablet that’s seen better days. It comes preloaded with texts to study, histories of paranormal events across the world, survivalist guides, how to settle interpersonal disputes, basic engineering and so on. It’s all pretty dry reading but he speeds through it all the same, voracious for new information. He hates DEXO, the people and the program, fears what they’ll make him into, but he loves learning.

  
In his classes he’s asked to make connections, to not focus on specific naming conventions or regional beliefs but to think critically and categorize: what types of paranormal events can occur, what are common causes, what steps should be taken. It’s a game of sorts to him, figuring out these puzzles and learning to recognize patterns and it’s something he’s really good at.

  
It furthers the divide between him and his peers when he makes connections and draws conclusions that they cannot. Almost all of them have gone through the first round of enhancement procedures by now and with excellent results thanks to the insight gained and changes made after the almost complete failure that was Valentine’s cohort.

  
Due to poor nutrition from a young age, bad luck with infections, and his high rejection rate of biomechanical components Valentine is much smaller than his classmates and his scarring is extensive. He serves as a constant uncomfortable reminder to his classmates of what could have all too easily happened to them as well. They are being cultivated as the pinnacle of all humanity has to offer; he is something that crawled out of the reject pile.

  
And yet despite all this, he is the cleverest of them all by far. He’s subjected to a number of tests and evaluations to determine if his level of intelligence is something replicable or if it is uniquely his. He never sees the results.

  
Years pass. There are more procedures, some medical some not. On one memorable occasion he spends an afternoon with a fortune teller so that they can determine if he has a particular affinity for any of the spiritual disciplines. There’s cards and bones and sticks and tea leaves and he finds the process fascinating if incomprehensible. The fortune teller on the other hand grows progressively more agitated throughout their session, unable to get a clear reading. Valentine asks if he can just study a bit of everything; he likes to learn so it’d hardly be a chore. The fortune teller just glares at him, then hands him a sheet of paper and a pencil and tells him to draw a series of dashed lines.

  
His results end up being inconclusive so while his classmates are split up into specialization groups for an hour each day, he is granted a study hall of sorts to independently pursue whatever strikes his fancy. He’s not sure what he enjoys more, being able to learn as much as he’s able to glean from the provided texts or the luxury of having a guaranteed hour a day all to himself.

  
He knows that he should make an effort to connect with his classmates and his teachers certainly try to encourage them to all make friends but he really just doesn’t know how. People are impermanent fixtures in his life, there one minute and gone the next so it hardly seems worth the effort.

  
He learns to make talismans and how to store power within an object.

  
He learns prayers and poems and how to channel power through the words he speaks, how to calm angry spirits, how to lay them to rest.

  
He learns engineering and basic ship repair, how to troubleshoot different makes of life support systems. He studies the history of mankind’s achievements from fire and the wheel to the fusion reactors and the first microchip.

  
The facility is an oddly liminal sort of space. The weather is temperate enough that the seasons all blend together and there’s a purposeful distinct lack of clocks and calendars. Classes and days run long and he learns so much but there don’t seem to be any definitive educational milestones to meet or an end date so time just goes on and on.

  
They are insulated from the outside world and whatever news there is of the Ark Project and the continued deterioration of the planet. There’s ships taking off at regular intervals, visible from the exercise yard, a reminder of the ultimate goal of DEXO. None of the children have been assigned to them just yet. Their time will come but for now they train and prepare.

  
Then the bombings start.

  
It’s launch pads at first. A group named Karma takes responsibility. They say that you reap what you sow and the human race has had this coming. Humanity shouldn’t be allowed to inflict itself upon other planets after destroying its own.

  
No one tells the children about this directly of course, they just piece together snatches of overheard conversations. The whole picture is disturbing. They’ve very nearly run out of time. Not everyone is going to make it off the planet and to top it off there’s terrorist groups that are gaining members exponentially. They say that humanity has had its chance and their home planet Tellus is done and people should just accept their fate instead of fighting each other for a spot on one of the Ark Project ships. They say that people should come together in their last days and make their exit with grace and peace instead of fear and panic.

  
Governments crack down and there’s no more bombings and while everyone’s not precisely at ease there’s no palpable air of concern, until a ship is destroyed weeks before it’s due to launch.

  
There’s suddenly a lot more soldiers present on the base, stricter curfews, more staff asked to stop commuting and to start living where they work. This time there is a definite sense of fear, of being blown up, of not making it out before the ships stop launching for good. He wonders if he’ll actually make it to space or if everything he’s endured so far will come to nothing.

  
The children are much calmer than the adults, having come to terms with their own mortality through the course of the program. There’s too many of them that have never returned from the medical wing at this point; they are all too aware that they have no control over their fate, whatever that might be.

  
It is decided that several regional facilities will be combined to consolidate personnel and to address increasing security needs. The children are loaded up on buses and Valentine is struck by a wave of déjà vu. The new facility is much the same as the old, just slightly larger. They do all have beds this time but the dorms are packed and he’s not used to all the noise and clutter and what feels like the constant brush of other bodies against his own. It’s overwhelming, too much stimulus to process.

  
Their class rosters are all shuffled and the staff reassigned and Valentine finds himself lost amongst a sea of strangers. Not that he ever really got to know his classmates, or wanted to for that matter but a hostile familiar face would’ve been slightly more reassuring than the faintly repulsed faces of strangers.

  
His scars have faded as much as they’re ever going to which isn’t much at all and he is still short for his age, which has now been estimated to be anywhere between twelve and fourteen years. Despite all the surgeries and spiritual augmentations he’s still of a very slight build and weak constitution. Academically he is peerless which presents a bit of a quandary in regards to his placement at this new facility.

  
He sticks out like a sore thumb.

  
After a series of interviews and many hushed discussions amongst the heads of the new facility Valentine ends up being categorized as mid-grade. His life becomes a waking nightmare as a result.

  
He is bullied for his size and overabundance of scars and his tendency to keep to himself. The other children are careful to not leave any obvious marks but the adults are all busy enough that they’re more than willing to look the other way as long as things don’t get too out of hand. They’re trying to save humanity, not run a daycare.

  
Valentine tries to blend in during classes, only speaking up when directly spoken to but his new teachers quickly learn that he can be depended upon to always have the right answer. They use this to try to motivate the other children in his class to better apply themselves, to compete with him intellectually but it only results in building resentment and making him even more of a target.

  
Physical training is part of their regime now. Augmentations have made it possible for program participants to exceed normal human parameters but muscle building and coordination and flexibility will still all have to be earned the old fashioned way.

  
Valentine trains in secret on his own, desperate to put on muscle. But no matter how hard he pushes himself he can’t overcome the limitations of his body. The bullying continues and while he wishes that he could make a show of strength to get them to leave him alone his progress is just too slow. So instead he pivots to learning all the hiding places, how to dodge and evade and escape. He takes pride in becoming uncatchable. Most of his tormentors give up when it becomes too much trouble to track him down and they switch to easier, slower and less clever targets.

  
The remaining few take it as a personal challenge to run him down. There’s this one kid in particular, Roberto and he’s got to be at least several years older and almost two feet taller than Valentine and he’s middling smart which at a regular sort of school would serve him well enough but amongst the enhanced he’s as dumb as a post.

  
He corners Valentine at lunch one day and normally the cafeteria is a safe place, closely monitored by a number of adults but on this day there’s been the threat of more bombings and they’re all off getting briefed while a skeleton crew stays behind.

  
Valentine books it as usual the second he twigs to what’s happening but thanks to being caught off guard he takes a right when he should take a left and gets cornered in front of a door that won’t open.

  
The next thing he knows he’s waking up in the medical wing. The nurse asks him what in the world he thought he was doing up on the roof. “Roof?” he croaks. He can’t really feel much of anything below his neck, which starts a low grade flutter of panic in his chest.

  
“You’re lucky to be alive,” they tsk at him, injecting something into his IV. “Fall like that, and the way you landed.”

  
_What fall?_ Everything fades to black.


	4. Gee

The next time he wakes Valentine still doesn’t remember what happened. He most likely never will according to the doctor, who says he’s got a concussion and his brain is good and scrambled. He’s also cracked some ribs, broke his collarbone, torn ligaments in his shoulder, and scraped skin off half his face and palms. He gets a lecture about how important the program is and how his horsing around is a waste of good resources and the future of humanity depends on him not being a complete dumbass, or something to that effect. He is on some very strong pain medication and it makes everything a little wobbly.

  
The next few days are all a bit of a haze and he can’t get any straight answers on what happened to Roberto, only that he’s ‘no longer with the program’. Valentine doesn’t know who the doctor thinks they’re fooling, everyone knows that’s what they say when someone’s dead.

  
The medical wing is pretty empty thanks to a sharp decline in newcomers to the facility. Rumor has it that someone who actually has both influence and scruples finally noticed that the governments of the world were forcing children into the program. They got the ball rolling on an investigation which led to leaks which led to a general outcry. Terrorist groups everywhere had gleefully proclaimed this proved their point that humanity wasn’t worth saving.

  
It’s nice having a double room all to himself until they cut off his pain meds and he becomes all too aware of the itch of healing skin on his face and hands. Thanks to the accelerated healing that all DEXO subjects enjoy Valentine will be out of the med wing and back in class soon but in the meantime he is in desperate need of a distraction before he scratches his face off.

  
He grossly overestimates his ability to do anything more strenuous than sitting up in bed. He’s got a sling for his arm and his ribs are taped but each step he takes is fresh agony as healing bones are jostled. He barely makes it out past the door to his room before he has to lean against the wall for support. He’s breathing hard, which only further aggravates his injuries.

  
“Everyone’s saying you killed Roberto and like, cut him up into tiny pieces and fed him to the crows,” a voice says from behind him. Valentine startles with surprise, which in turn tweaks his ribs and collarbone and really fucking hurts. Once his vision clears and the pain recedes enough to the point where he’s not in complete agony he very slowly, very carefully turns his head.

  
“Hi!” chirps a boy that’s a good foot taller than Valentine and looks oddly cheery given he’s just accused him of being a murderer. He gives a little wave as he smiles. “I’m Gee.” He waits expectantly for Valentine to respond in kind.

  
“Like the crows would eat him,” Valentine says absently, still not sure what to think about the whole murder thing. This kid is weird. He won’t stop smiling and he is way too friendly. He also looks like he could bench press Valentine which is…concerning given that it’s taking all his strength to keep from sliding down the wall onto the floor. Being in pain is exhausting.

  
“Yeah he was a dick, wasn’t he,” Gee agrees happily. “Need a hand?”

  
“I didn’t kill him,” Valentine says, exasperated and not sure what the point of this whole interaction is supposed to be. Seriously what is this guy’s deal and what would it take for him to go bother someone else. Valentine’s legs finally give out and he starts to slide down the wall. God _damn_ it.

  
The kid—Gee—reaches out to help support him but he yanks his hands back at the last second, realizing that there’s not really a good way of doing so that won’t aggravate Valentine’s injuries. So he just stands there, hands held out uselessly while Valentine continues his slow descent to the floor. He lands in a bit of a tangle. Everything hurts.

  
“Sorry!” Gee apologizes, face twisted with concern. “Wasn’t sure where to grab you.”

  
“It’s cool,” Valentine says, starting the slow and painful process of sorting out his limbs. He somehow manages to turn so his back’s up against the wall and his legs are more or less sprawled out in front of him. How the hell is he going to get back inside his room before the nurse comes to check on him?

  
Gee sits down right next to him. Like, _right_ next to him. He is uncomfortably close. Valentine can practically feel the heat radiating off his skin. “So how did you do it?” Gee asks.

  
“Huh?”

  
“You know, Roberto?”

  
Valentine shoots him a death glare but Gee just laughs and laughs. “Kidding! Kidding!”

  
They sit in awkward silence and Valentine wonders how long it’ll take before this weirdo gets bored and wanders off. He tries to sneak a look at him without turning his head and their eyes meet. _Gah_.

  
Gee laughs and slides over the scant few inches between them, companionably bumping their shoulders together. “I’m just here to get my hand looked at.” He holds up a hand that’s in a brace. “Broke it a few days ago and they want to see how it’s coming along.”

  
Valentine turns to look at him and Gee’s sobered up now, a serious look on his face. “No one’s going to miss Roberto, really. What happened to you sucked. Just wanted to let you know.”

  
Valentine’s not sure what to say to that so he just nods his thanks. It’s hard to not be suspicious, no one’s ever nice to him. On a good day they’re indifferent. The throbbing in his shoulder isn’t getting any worse but it’s getting harder to ignore, to say nothing of the ache of his ribs. His fingers twitch as he tries to resist scratching everything that itches. He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall. He sighs.

  
“They teach you meditation yet?” Gee asks. Valentine guesses it was too much to hope for just one quiet minute to sort himself out.

  
“No.” He’s learned a number of what he’d been told are essential skills. Things like how to identify and subdue a number of supernatural creatures, making and modifying charms and talismans and protective amulets, how to find missing people or missing things. Meditation has come up in his classes but only as a brief mention in a very long list of things he’ll be expected to know.

  
“Ah, well, they taught us and it’s supposed to be good for all sorts of things?”

  
“Uh huh.”

  
“I just…it might help. You take deep breaths and like, clear your mind.”

  
Valentine reluctantly opens his eyes and looks back over at Gee who is just making this…face. Like all he wants is to do is one nice thing for Valentine. Valentine doesn’t trust it. Can’t trust it, not in this place. No one here is nice without an ulterior motive. “Ribs are broke. Breathing sucks.”

  
Gee’s face falls and Valentine feels the briefest stab of guilt. Seriously though who asked this guy to care. What is his _deal_.

  
Gee sits with him in an almost companionable silence until the nurse comes back. She predictably gives Valentine a hard time but then Gee turns on the charm and distracts her. He gets her laughing and smiling and even blushing a little all while she’s helping Valentine up and back into his room, back into bed. She tells Gee they need to go take a look at his hand and he says sure but when they’re done can he come sit with Valentine a bit. She gives him an odd look.

  
“If it was me sitting all alone with no pain meds, I’d want some company,” Gee says, not even looking over at Valentine. He’s just continuing to dial up the charm, softening his gaze, gentling his smile.

  
_Ah, there it is_ , Valentine thinks. _He’s just being nice to me to try and score some points with the nurse_.

  
As a strategy it’s not half bad. The nurse looks utterly charmed. She agrees to let Gee come back and sit with Valentine after he gets his hand looked at. Valentine just huffs and shakes his head. He knew there had to be some sort of angle.

  
So he’s _very_ surprised when not even fifteen minutes later the door to his room swings open and Gee comes barreling through. “Catch!”

  
Valentine’s too slow to react and something hits him in the chest. “The fuck!” He rubs absently to soothe the pain as he looks down to see what hit him. It’s a chocolate bar. And not the cheap kind either, it’s the super expensive stuff that is almost impossible to get these days. He looks back up at Gee in astonishment.

  
“I know where the nurses hide the good stuff,” Gee shrugs and tries to play it off like it’s no big deal. “No pain meds and meditation’s no good so I thought maybe, you know. Chocolate.”

  
“They are going to _murder_ you when they find out it’s missing,” Valentine warns him even as he’s carefully removing the paper sleeve. He gently snaps the bar and the foil covering it in half. He can’t remember the last time he ate anything that was even remotely sweet. He holds one of the halves out to Gee. “Might as well get something out of it.”

  
He’s managed to surprise the other boy. “You don’t—Really?”

  
Not only did Gee actually come back but he brought _chocolate_. Of course Valentine’s going to share. He scoots over a bit so Gee can sit down next to him if he wants. It will be a bit of a squeeze but he doesn’t think Gee’s got a real good grasp on personal space anyway. Sure enough, the other boy takes his share of the chocolate and sits down next to him. Valentine very carefully breaks a square off his half and tucks it under his tongue to let it melt. It’s very dark and very rich.

  
Gee on the other hand takes a huge bite out of his and _chews_ it. He gets through his half of the bar in relatively short order then notices that Valentine’s barely touched his. “You don’t like it?”

  
Valentine laughs and shakes his head. “It’s good.” He kind of wants to wrap the rest of his half back up and hide it somewhere for later, really make it last. Is that weird? Will Gee think it’s weird? He doesn’t like caring what other people think. “Thanks,” he says, face growing warm with embarrassment. No one’s ever given him a gift before and he’s not quite sure what to do. He wraps the chocolate back up and very carefully not looking at Gee he slides it under the pillow for safekeeping.

  
Gee, in a rare moment of tactfulness, says nothing but the corners of his mouth twitch up in a there and gone again smile. “I’ve got some reading I need to get done,” he says. “Thought I might do it here, if that’s okay with you?”

  
Valentine nods, unsure where this is all going. Gee reaches into the bag he’s got slung over one shoulder and fishes out his tablet. “Thought you might like to read along,” he says. “We’re working through some epic poems now and they’re actually pretty cool stories. Like, there’s the things we’re supposed to be learning about but there’s also sword fights and stuff.”

  
“That does sound cool,” Valentine says. He doesn’t like modern accounts of supernatural incidents as they tend to be incredibly dry. He’s enjoyed the historical stuff a great deal though despite his teachers’ fondness for pointing out all the inaccuracies and gaps in logic and imprecise nature of the flowery language that’s used.

  
Gee grins then holds out the tablet so they can both see.

  
Valentine wakes just as the night nurse comes in to check on him. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He remembers the beginning of the story he started with Gee but that’s pretty much it. It’s disappointing, realizing that he’s missed a rare opportunity to spend some time with someone who not only tolerates him but seems against all odds to actually enjoy his company.

  
The nurse pokes and prods and questions him and says he should be back to his regular schedule in the next day or two given how he’s healing. Valentine wonders if he’ll see Gee around or not. He wonders if he wants to. He wonders if Gee wants to.  
He eats his dinner and catches up on his own reading which is incredibly dull. The unit they’re currently on is funeral rites throughout history and across the world and despite his usually excellent memory he’s having a hard time keeping it all straight. He’s not sure if that’s to do with the concussion or his lack of interest.

  
Gee returns the next day much to Valentine’s surprise. He bursts through the door, tablet in hand. He waves it at Valentine as he makes his way across the room, says he needs to finish his reading. Confused but pleased, Valentine draws his legs up and crosses them, making room for Gee to sit on the bed if he wants. He does.

  
“You fell asleep pretty fast there last time!” Gee gives Valentine a warm smile. He’s always smiling.

  
“Yeah,” Valentine agrees sheepishly, looking down at the bedspread. He picks at a loose thread.  
“I think you missed most of it, want me to catch you up?”

  
Embarrassed but grateful, Valentine nods his head.

  
Gee summarizes the story so far, frequently interjecting with his own thoughts and opinions. When it gets to the sword fights he swings his arms around, pantomiming his favorite bits which is pretty much all of them.

  
There’s a lightness in Valentine’s chest and a smile he can’t quite keep off his face. He should be cautious, wary of the other shoe that surely must be due to drop but all he can think of is how do I get more of this. He hasn’t realized until just this moment how lonely he’s been.

  
The nurse has to tell them to keep it down several times although her heart’s not really in it. The medical wing is still pretty empty so it’s not like they’re actually bothering anyone. She does finally get stricter about it once curfew is near. Somehow Gee wheedles his way into spending the night. He drags the empty second bed over so that it’s right next to Valentine’s and they can keep talking even though they’ve received dire warnings to keep it down if he doesn’t want to get kicked out.

  
Eventually they exhaust all their thoughts on Gee’s reading assignment. The sword fights had been awesome, and there was _battle magic_ and demons and a surprise twist ending. Valentine had thought for sure it would end with the main character nobly sacrificing himself for the greater good. Instead it had ended with him throwing down his sword and giving a speech where he pretty much told everyone that he deeply regretted dedicating his life to serving a bunch of ungrateful fucks and they could go kick rocks. Valentine didn’t think stories were _allowed_ to end like that.

  
“Thanks,” he says. The word falls incredibly short of what he feels right now, still coming down off the euphoria of sharing something fun with someone who by all appearances really enjoys spending time with him, but it’s all he’s got.

  
Gee laughs but doesn’t say anything else for a long time. Then he says quietly, “I hate this place.”

  
Valentine doesn’t know what to say. He hates it too? Does _anyone_ like it here?

  
“There were so many of us to start with. And people just keep disappearing and we all pretend like they’ve gone somewhere else but everyone knows that they’re dead. And it’s like, everyone’s just given up, going with the program because what else are they going to do?”

  
It’s nothing Valentine hasn’t thought to himself in the dark a thousand times over on the nights he can’t sleep. But it’s the first time he’s heard anyone else say it.

  
“And look at you, you shouldn’t even _exist_.”

  
And there it is, the other shoe dropped. Valentine’s stomach twists, going sour. “Fuck you,” he grinds out, face growing hot as tears start to gather. _And fuck me for thinking I’d made a friend_ , he thinks bitterly. He’s got to get out of here. He fights his way free of the blankets and sheets and just as he’s about to swing his legs out of the bed and run for the door Gee grabs his wrist.

  
“No, wait!”  
Valentine tugs but Gee’s grip is firm.

  
“You don’t understand! Everyone here talks and they said— the doctors say that you should be dead but you’re not and they don’t understand why and maybe it’s just because you’re stubborn and they’re scared, so scared of how _smart_ you are. How you pick up all the spiritualist stuff like it’s nothing. Better than the rest of us by a _lot_.”

  
Valentine stops struggling and just looks across the beds at Gee’s too earnest face.

  
“And everyone else hates you and treats you like shit and it doesn’t even phase you, Roberto had like fifty pounds on you easy and you didn’t give him a fucking inch.”

  
“I don’t remember what happened,” Valentine says woodenly. He doesn’t need Gee to tell him what he already knows, that everyone hates him. And Gee doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s not smart or brave, all he’s learned how to do is run when someone is after him.

  
“You tricked him into chasing you across the roof. He slipped and fell, broke his neck.”

  
So Roberto is dead. He’d guessed as much. It still doesn’t stop the rising horror and creeping dread he feels at being responsible for someone else’s death, no matter how indirectly.

  
“And you,” Gee shakes his head ruefully, “only you, got pulled down when you tried to save him. For such a smart guy you’re kind of an idiot.”

  
Valentine bristles instinctively at the insult but his brain’s still churning over all this new information. And the one thing he keeps coming back to is why is Gee here. What does he have to gain by telling Valentine all of this? Why is he still holding on to his wrist? Valentine tugs and this time Gee lets him go.

  
“Why,” Valentine asks at last. “Why me, why are you telling me all of this?”

  
“Everyone else has just given up, they just go along with whatever they’re told and they’ll all be good little soldiers by the time they get their placement. They’re _excited_. They wanna be _special_.” Gee scoffs in disgust, a dark look crossing over his face.

  
“But you, you’re just trying to survive. So am I. And I could really use a friend.”


	5. Dreams

They don’t see each other much at first because Gee is a few years older than Valentine and several classes ahead. Valentine keeps an eye out though and whenever their paths do cross Gee always greets him with a smile and a wave. This confuses their classmates and earns Valentine a lot of speculative looks. He finds it uncomfortable and embarrassing. Outright hostility is something he’s much more used to dealing with.

  
He’s still not sure what to make of Gee. He’s never really had a friend before but that’s what Gee says they are and who is he to argue? It’s still hard for Valentine to believe that someone would want to be his friend. But he has his slowly diminishing half of a chocolate bar as a reminder that maybe nice things aren’t completely beyond his reach.

  
It’s exciting to have something to look forward to. Each encounter with Gee is electric, hitting him with a burst of energy that makes the days go faster. When he doesn’t see Gee for a while it’s like all time slows to a crawl, dull and interminable.

  
Meal times are staggered by class so occasionally they’ll catch each other coming or going and on rare occasions there’s just enough overlap for them to have a handful of minutes to actually exchange words. There’s also pockets of time between waking and first class, dinner and curfew which Valentine has up until recently been utilizing to work out on his own, to do what he could to try and bulk up and add more muscle. He is now forbidden from doing so.

  
Apparently he isn’t as sneaky as he thinks and during one of his check ups the doctor sternly informs him that he needs to sleep more and fatigue his body less. Valentine pushes back of course, arguing that his becoming strong is a large part of what the program is designed for, preparing its subjects for a hard life on another planet.

But his reality is this: he has been pushing too hard, wearing himself thin and no amount of exercise is going to achieve what all the experimental medical procedures have not. He’s always going to be significantly shorter than his peers and much more slightly built.

It’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing and suddenly being left with free time to contemplate how he is essentially a failure is daunting. He copes by sleeping in and going to bed early at first and loses all sense of time, days blending in to one another as he listlessly shuffles from bed to class, from class to bed. Gee’s smiles become less wide, more concerned. He’s always asking Valentine if he’s eaten, if he’s feeling alright. It’s annoying.

  
Then one morning Gee seeks Valentine out. He catches him just as he’s headed past the dining hall to his first class and grabs him by the hand. Caught off guard, Valentine doesn’t say a word as he’s dragged down a hallway and around the corner and out a side door. They’re immediately caught in a downpour, rain pelting down hard on his uncovered face and arms. It stings a bit. Thunder booms and the sky lights up and the air reeks of wet earth and ozone and for the first time in what feels like weeks he’s really truly _awake_.

  
Valentine hadn’t realized that they’d stopped moving and Gee is just standing there, watching him. They’re still holding hands. Gee’s hand is warm and rough, his grip firm. Something loosens in Valentine’s chest and he breathes in deep, lets it all out in a sigh.

  
“What are we doing?” he yells to be heard over the storm.

  
“Exploring!” Gee grins at him and tugs on his hand and they run in the rain, splashing across uneven pavement. They head out towards the back half of the compound that’s been closed off for renovations that have yet to start. They’re soaked through by the time they find a door that’s been left unlocked.

  
Valentine braces himself for an alarm that doesn’t come as they enter into the building.  
Gee laughs at him. “Power’s been disconnected,” he says, holding up a flashlight. The door slams shut behind them and Valentine jumps, startled. Gee laughs again. “Scared?”

  
“Oh screw you,” Valentine grumbles, embarrassed.

  
Gee switches the flashlight on and shines it up under his chin, giving his face a sinister look. “Maybe there’ll be ghosts!” He wails like a ghost and reaches out with his free hand to grab at Valentine, who laughs and shoves him away.

  
They’re in a hallway that looks like any other in the compound except the floors are carpeted instead of tile and there’s a visible haze of dust on everything. Valentine sneezes. “I wish there were ghosts. What are we even looking for?”

  
Gee shrugs. “Just needed to get out of there for a while, and it’s not like we can really go anywhere.”

  
He’s mentioned this before, his daydreams of someday finding a way through the outer wall of the compound to the world beyond. Running far away and living off the land. Freedom.

  
Valentine’s never seen the point to it really. Their world is dying, there’s nowhere left to run to. He hates the program but it’s the only way out, the only way off this rock to somewhere better. _Or far worse_ , that negative voice that’s always at the back of his mind unhelpfully supplies.

  
“They’re going to notice when we don’t show up for class.”

  
“Oh no what will they do to us?” Gee pulls an exaggerated look of horror. Valentine just shakes his head and tries not to laugh.

  
“Better make it worth our while then, come on.” Gee leads the way further inside. The carpet is old, stained and worn and the seams made obvious where they’ve begun to unravel. The ceiling above them is suspended tile, same as the rest of the compound but there’s giant black holes where some have gone missing or crashed to the floor below in a crumbling powdery mess. Some are water stained and drip drip dripping down to the floor below. The entire place smells like dust and damp.

  
Valentine’s clothes are soaked through, clinging heavily to his skin. Water squelches uncomfortably in his shoes with each step. He half wants to turn around and head back.

  
There’s really not much to see. All the rooms are unlocked but all that’s inside them is office furniture that’s seen better days. Gee pokes through a few filing cabinets but aside from the occasional dead bug or paperclip they’re all empty.

  
The long hallway terminates into a wide open cafeteria that spans the entire width of the building. The exterior wall is all windows. Rain pelts against the glass, obscuring the view. Valentine can hear the rain hitting the metal roof in a furious roar of white noise.

  
Gee stands in front of the windows, hands down at his sides, flashlight still on but pointed down. His voice is barely audible when he asks, “How far do you think we’d get?”

  
Ah. This again. Valentine stands next to him, looks out the window. The outlines of other buildings are just vague grey shapes. He can’t quite make out the wall that encircles the compound.

  
“There’s nothing out there Gee.”

  
“There’s nothing _here_ ,” Gee argues. He’s staring straight ahead, not looking at Valentine but his jaw is clenched, eyebrows drawn low, nose flared a bit. It’s an odd look on a face that’s usually so cheerful.

  
“No, there’s not,” Valentine agrees.

  
“What’s the difference,” Gee asks, “between dying here or dying out in space?”

  
Valentine tries to think of an answer while the rain continues to fall. It’s hitting so hard it bounces off the pavement. The rumble of thunder becomes distant.

  
“We’re going to live longer than everyone else,” he says at last. Gee shoots him a sharp look. “I know, I know. _If_ we make it out of here. I just—they made us stronger, they’re teaching us all this stuff, we’re meant to survive. And I know it could all go to shit out there but maybe…” He trails off, unsure how Gee’s going to take what he has to say.

  
“Maybe?”

  
Valentine shrugs, refuses to look Gee in the eye. It’s embarrassing. “They’ll all be gone, the people that did this to us. But we—we’ll still have each other.” He cringes inwardly, just waiting for Gee to laugh at him or say _whoa there, I know I said we’re friends but that’s a bit much_.

  
Gee doesn’t laugh at him but he doesn’t say anything either for what feels like an eternity. It’s excruciating, waiting for his response.

  
“So we’ll go on space adventures together huh?” Gee’s smiling at him, Valentine can hear it in his voice. He can’t quite make himself look though.

  
“Don’t laugh at me you dick.”

  
“Who, me?”

  
Valentine shoves him, face hot with embarrassment. “I was trying to be nice!”

  
Gee just laughs and grabs his hands before Valentine can shove him again. “It _was_ nice, really. I still think we’re all going to die horribly but if we do survive then yeah, let’s you and me go explore space. We’ll steal a ship and be space pirates.”

  
“You’re ridiculous,” Valentine sputters as he tries to free himself. Gee just laughs and lets him go.  
“Promise me,” Gee says. “We make it out of here, we’ll be space pirates.” He’s still laughing at Valentine but his eyes are dead serious.

  
“I didn’t say anything about being pirates! I—”

  
“Promise.”

  
Valentine rolls his eyes and huffs. “Fine.”

  
“Fine what?”

  
Valentine growls in mock outrage and shoves him.


	6. Running Out of Time

They do get in trouble for sneaking out but their punishment is laughable. Confined to quarters for two weeks with the exception of classes and meals, regular check ins to make sure they’re where they are supposed to be. It’s not fun and it means that Valentine and Gee don’t see each other for a while but it’s not like they had much else to lose to begin with.

Valentine worries about Gee. He’s always talked about escaping but Valentine had thought that talk was all it ever was, that it was just a way for him to vent his frustrations and stress. Now Valentine’s not so sure. And now there’s the whole space pirates thing! Where did that even come from? Does Gee seriously expect to hold him to that promise? All Valentine had wanted to do was be a good friend. Then Gee had to go and get all weird about it.

Valentine can’t stop thinking about it now though. It would be fun, stealing a ship and making it theirs. They could go wherever they wanted. Do whatever they wanted. Explore space, meet some aliens. Fight some space ghosts.

But in order to do that they’ve first got to get off planet, and the sooner the better. He worries that Gee might really try to escape. Or that he might succeed even, and leave Valentine behind. Valentine tries really hard to not worry about being left behind because the minute he thinks about it too much it pretty much just breaks his brain.

Being part of the program was tolerable before Gee but now that Valentine knows what it’s like to have a friend he can’t go back to the way things were before. Loneliness was much easier to bear when he didn’t have anything else to compare it to.

The more time they spend together the more Valentine comes to hate the time that they’re apart. Gee’s the first person who has ever actively tried to get to know him and he didn’t realize just how much he needed that until now. Someone knows him now. Someone would miss him if he died. It’s an incredible feeling.

Valentine’s classmates still give him a lot of shit but these days it’s more talk and less hitting him when the teachers aren’t looking, less stealing food off his cafeteria tray, less ‘accidental’ destruction of his coursework. Some of them have even warmed up to him a little, like now that one person has decided he’s worth hanging around that must mean something. Valentine’s too wary to really take advantage of this. He’s just glad that he doesn’t have to watch his back quite so closely these days. He’s not really interested in getting to know his classmates better anyway, Gee is enough all on his own.

Gee seems to really latch on to the space pirates thing and these days most of the conversations he and Valentine have revolve around what traveling in space will actually be like. They wonder what it will be like to put to use everything they’re being taught, how often they’ll really come across restless spirits or monsters that they’ll have to deal with. Gee seems to think that all their textbooks are pretty biased against supernatural creatures and spirits that haven’t moved on, that they can’t all possibly be evil and in need of exterminating. It’s nothing Valentine himself hasn’t thought a time or two before but there’s a difference between thinking it and saying it and he says as much and they end up fighting over it.

Gee calls him a conformist sheep that’s desperate for approval and Valentine punches him in the face and cries.

They don’t speak for days and it’s horrible. Valentine doesn’t want to take back what he did because Gee was being an _asshole_ but now everything is ruined. He doesn’t know what to do other than sulk and avoid everywhere he knows that Gee will be.

But Gee tracks him down, grabs him as he’s walking out of his last class of the day and heading back to the dorms. He gets dragged down the hall to a blind spot underneath a security camera.

“What the fuck Gee!”

“I’m not sorry!” Gee whisper-shouts, keeping his white knuckled grip on Valentine’s sleeve.

“Fuck off, neither am I!” Valentine debates the merits of kicking Gee in the shin versus punching him in the face. He thought they were _friends_ and now Gee’s turned out to be like all the rest, just another bully backing him into a corner.

“I thought you were different!”

“Stop stealing my lines you fucker,” Valentine hisses, mind made as he takes a swing at Gee. Gee lets go of his sleeve and dodges the punch. Valentine curses at him for dodging, and again as he overbalances.

Gee catches him, wraps him up in a hug, pinning his arms to his sides. He’s breathing hard and his voice is uneven when his speaks. “I miss my friend!” His voice breaks on the last word.

Valentine tries so hard to hold onto his anger even as it’s slipping away. “Maybe don’t be such a gigantic dick then,” he grumbles, face mashed into Gee’s chest. He hates how Gee’s so much taller than he is. Hates his stupid face, his total lack of apology.

“You can’t tell me you’ve never questioned what they’re teaching,” Gee says. He speaks softly, but his arms are like iron and he’s so, so warm.

“It’s called keeping your head down genius. Can’t you at least wait until we get out of here before you start making a big stink out of everything?”

Gee loosens his grip and steps back just far enough to look Valentine in the eye. “They told us that we should be grateful, that we were _chosen_ —”

Valentine snorts derisively. “Yeah, they ran out of _volunteers_.”

“I know, right?” Gee says with a bitter smile. “Don’t you ever get tired of it, all the lies?”

Sure, he’s tired of it. Aside from Gee Valentine doesn’t really trust anyone to tell him the truth. But that’s just life in the program.

“It’s not forever Gee.”

“I _hate_ this.”

“I know.”

Gee is obviously not handling things well, not that Valentine can really blame him. He thinks that if his teachers ever try to talk up the program like that, try to bullshit them into believing that they ever had a choice, that they are anything other than the unluckiest motherfuckers around, he’d probably be pretty homicidal over it.


	7. Bargaining

Valentine does feel slightly guilty about being excited to go into space. He’s never really gone anywhere, seen anything, lived a life outside institutions. Space is this big unknown adventure that’s full of possibilities he can’t even begin to imagine.

Gee, from what little he’s said, has only recently become orphaned so maybe his life was better before the program. Maybe it’s easier for him to look backwards rather than forwards.

As part of his master plan for getting placed on the same ship together Valentine nags Gee into letting him take a look at his coursework. Gee is super judgmental and unexpectedly bitchy about it. He gives Valentine the stink-eye and says that he knows what he’s up to, that Valentine isn’t nearly as sneaky as he thinks he is.

“Okay, but are you going to help me or not?” Valentine holds out his hand, expectant.

“I said I would, just take the damn thing.” Gee hands over his tablet.

Valentine scans through the available documents eagerly, then lets out a disappointed huff as he sees that it’s just a bunch of really dry engineering texts and manuals on talisman creation and basic warding that he’s already read on his own time. There’s also a couple texts on field medicine but he figures that if anyone is ever depending on him instead of an actual doctor for help they’re probably gonna die anyway.

“Not what you thought it was gonna be, huh?” Gee says with only a hint of smugness.

Valentine rolls his eyes. “I’m _trying_ to skip ahead a few classes so we don’t get separated. Don’t be a dick about it.”

“You sure you want to be on the same ship? Knowing my luck we’ll end up being the first to accidentally fly into a black hole or something.”

“Okay can you seriously not say shit like that? It’s bad luck! Besides, it wouldn’t be the first, it’s already happened. It was like…the ninth? I think?” Despite the efforts of the staff at the facility to limit outside information Valentine knows just enough about the fates of earlier expeditions to keep him up late at night if he thinks about it too much.

“Oh well wouldn’t want to jinx it, sure. You know our chances aren’t that great right?”

“No, seriously you can shut right the hell up anytime now.” Valentine really doesn’t want to focus on the infinite number of things that could possibly go wrong, as most of them will be outside his ability to control.

Gee just laughs at him.

“Just keep your shit together until we get out of here, okay?” Valentine feels like all he ever does these days is try to extract promises from Gee so he doesn’t do something crazy.

Gee shakes his head, dismissive.

“ _If_ we get separated and that’s a big if because I’m going to catch up, I _will_ come find you, okay?”

“Yeah okay, sure.”

“Don’t you fucking patronize me,”Valentine snaps. Gee’s doing that thing where he gets lost inside his own head again, drowning in his own pessimism. Valentine can’t stand it.

“Hey, going a few ships after me is probably a good thing. Look what happens to the people that go through stuff first in this program.”

Valentine’s too shocked to respond. He’s sure Gee didn’t mean anything by it but it cuts surprisingly deep all the same. Valentine knows _exactly_ what it’s like to go first. He wishes he could forget.

He manages to summon up a wry smile that’s at odds with the twist of pain lancing through his heart. “So instead of a black hole they’ll just have run out of good planets.”

“That’s the spirit!” Gee says with a mocking smile and a thumbs up.

“Yeah, well,” Valentine shrugs. “You’re a horrible influence.”

The top classes start to receive their ship assignments. They are introduced to their crews and start going through their final rounds of enhancements. Their glowing eyes are creepy as fuck, but also kind of cool. Valentine wonders what his eyes will look like when it’s his turn. He wonders what Gee’s eyes will look like.

If Valentine wasn’t running out of time before he definitely is now. He’s been harassing his advisor weekly, trying to see if there’s any way he can test up or out of his classes. His concerns get brushed aside and he gets handed busywork under the guise of extra instruction, in the hopes of distracting him. Too bad he’s already read through all the supplementary materials he can get his hands on.

He knows that there’s a danger of pushing too hard and too far but he just doesn’t have any more _time_ to be tactical about it. So he pushes and pushes and won’t take no for an answer and finally his advisor stops giving him the standard bullshit non answers.

“Your academics are not the problem,” they tell Valentine with a patronizing look over the top oftheir glasses. Did they practice that in the mirror? Who even _wears_ glasses any more? _How pretentious can you get_ , Valentine thinks. “The classes are set up in a very specific way, accounting for a number of variables.”

“Like what?”

His advisor, who up until now has never had a hard time looking him right in the eye as they rattle off the usual excuses, looks down at their hands which are folded together on top of their desk. “Your academics are the only reason you haven’t been failed from the program outright,” they say at last.

_What._

They pull up Valentine’s record on their monitor and take their time reading through it even though by now they must have the damn thing memorized. It’s clearly a stall for time. They remove their glasses and begin to buff the lenses against their shirt. “The plan, such as it is, is to wait and see if your physical condition improves. Ideally we’d give it a few more years but at this point I’m not sure we have that long as we are approaching the end of the timeline for the program.”

Ah yes, adult speak for _if you don’t get assigned to a ship soon then it’s not happening at all_.

They clear their throat then take their sweet time taking a sip from a mug that Valentine’s pretty sure is empty. “What I can offer is an early …dismissal from the program, if you’d like.”

“What like put me out of my misery?” To say that he’s shocked would be an understatement. The last thing Valentine expected today was to be offered a chance to be put down like some sort of sick animal.

His advisor chokes on air. “ _What_?” They manage to ask, eyes watering as they can’t stop coughing.

“You know,” Valentine mimes shooting himself in the head. “Isn’t that usually how people leave the program?”

His advisor stares at him in unadulterated horror.

“…Were we not supposed to know?”

“Fucking _hell_ ,” his advisor manages at last. “I was offering you a chance to live out the rest of your life as you choose since there’s little point in staying here if you’re not going to finish out the program. I wasn’t offering to have you _killed_.”

Valentine shrugs. “It’d be nicer than watching everyone else fuck off to space, leaving me to die with all the other rejects who didn’t make the cut.”

His advisor groans and buries their face in their hands. “I’m trying to give you as much control as I can over your own life, can you at least pretend to be grateful? Also, _language_.”

It’s crushing, the realization that not only will he be separated from Gee but now it’s looking like they won’t even have the opportunity to meet up later. Because Valentine will be dead, along with all the other poor fuckers who don’t have a ride off the planet.

_Fuck._

“I’m not giving up,” he swears, pushing his way up out of his chair to loom over his advisor.

They just sigh and shake their head. “I wish you luck,” they say. “You’re going to need it.”


	8. Metamorphosis

And just as all of Valentine’s hopes and plans are going up in flames Gee oddly enough, turns a corner. For the first time he seems to be looking forward to going to space. He still bitches about the endless propaganda, isn’t for one second swayed into thinking that he’s lucky or special or _chosen_. But he now seems really invested in what life on a ship will be like, and what sort of planet he might end up on.

Gee’s excited about the coursework now that he’s learning more about the specific model of ship he’ll be traveling on, and how to help with establishing the settlement once he’s arrived on his assigned planet. Apparently there’s all kinds of responsibilities that aren’t really related to being a spiritualist that he’ll be taking on. The way that post-Tellus society is being constructed means Paranormal Investigators will be fairly high up on the command chain and given an exceptional amount of latitude and lack of oversight in performing their duties.

A position of power is something Valentine’s never really aspired to, and he might not be close with his classmates but he knows them well enough that he can’t really say it’s the smartest call to put them in charge of anything. Gee on the other hand counts it as a win; all he wants, all he’s ever wanted he says, is to be in control instead of having someone else telling him what to do.

Valentine’s glad that Gee’s doing better, that he’s no longer half a step away from attempting an escape. But now he can’t help but wonder how upset he’ll really be once he finds out that Valentine’s not going to make it out into space. Valentine’s sure that Gee will miss him at least a little, but he’s going to live a long time. In a hundred years will Gee even remember him?

Valentine’s last ditch effort is to haunt the medical wing in his free time, waiting for his chance to approach one of the doctors that’s in charge of the last round of enhancements.

It takes him the better part of two weeks but at last he manages to talk to Dr. Travers. They’ve never met before but she knows exactly who he is, and surprisingly, what he’s after.

“Yes, yes I’ve spoken with your advisor. They said you’d probably be along.” Valentine attempts to get a word in but she waves him aside. “Look, in your own way you are _exceptional_ but your body… The physical enhancements just didn’t take the way they needed to. Yes, you are stronger than the average human, and will have an extended life span but you also suffered numerous setbacks and side effects and damage. There’s no telling how that’s going to affect you long term and we need people that are in the best shape if they’ve any hope to survive out there.” She makes a vague gesture with her hand, seeming to indicate the universe at large.

Valentine scowls and once again tries to argue his case but she continues to speak right over him. “There’s a good chance you’ll need extensive reworking at some point and if you’re in a settlement that lacks the resources, that’s it for you and your settlement will be down a critical member.”

“There’s got to be something you can do,” Valentine insists, knowing that if he gives up now he might as well take his advisor up on their offer to just go live it up in what little time he’s got left.

“It’s too big a risk. It’s a miracle you survived the procedures the first time around. Yes, some of it was due to improper adjustment of protocols when switching from adult subjects to juveniles—”

“Yeah it’s you guys’ mistake but it’s my _life_ , so fix it,” Valentine interrupts, trying his best to maintain an even tone of voice despite his growing sense of hopelessness and rage.

“You weren’t an ideal candidate to begin with,” the doctor says, giving him a steely look. “Any further procedures run the risk of permanent debilitating injury or death.”

“ _And_?”

Dr. Travers briefly loses her composure, shock flashing across her face.

“I’m going to die anyway if I get left behind,” Valentine shrugs. “I’d rather die on the operating table than waiting to see if it’s a natural disaster or getting knifed over rations that kills me.”

“I can’t guarantee your placement even if corrective procedures are successful,” Dr. Travers warns him. “It could all be for nothing.”

“Like I said, I don’t really have anything to lose.”

The doctor hums thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can do.”


	9. The Core Problem

The wait is interminable. Valentine tries to not let it get to him but most days he feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin. He half expects Gee to say something, to ask him what’s wrong, but Gee is too caught up in his newfound enthusiasm for the program to notice.

Finally Valentine gets a response. It’s not from the doctor though, but from the head spiritualist. He’s informed that he’s got a meeting scheduled instead of his usual afternoon classes and all he can think is _oh shit they’re cutting me loose and this is just the guy they got to hold my hand and tell me it’s going to be all right_.

His first thought upon meeting Spiritualist Morgan is _this can’t be the head guy, he doesn’t look much older than Gee_. He is a bit on the scruffy side too, with tired looking eyes and a few days’ worth of stubble. His uniform is tight in the shoulders, too long on the arms, and hopelessly wrinkled.

Morgan tells him to take a seat. Valentine says he’d rather stand if it’s all the same, and the guy just laughs at him. _Dick_.

“Relax kid, you’re not getting kicked out.”

Valentine still doesn’t sit. “What is this then?”

“ _Sit_ ,” Morgan makes a gesture and an armchair bumps up against the back of Valentine’s legs, unbalancing him just enough that he falls right into the seat.

Valentine gasps in surprise. He’s seen small things, little magics performed by his instructors at the very start of the program. They were necessary to demonstrate that there’s an immeasurable force out there that science can’t explain and that those who can tune into it can harness for their own ends. And he’s done his own small magics as part of his coursework. But he’s never seen something so flashy, so improvised. Morgan hadn’t used a wand or a talisman or any sort of focus, not even an incantation.

Morgan quirks a small smile at his reaction. “That’s little more than a parlor trick, but as I’m sure you can imagine more powerful practitioners than myself were… reluctant to have anything to do with this program.”

Valentine nods slowly, not sure what to say. He didn’t know, not really. He hasn’t given it much thought. Before the program magic hadn’t really been a part of his life. Now it’s more of an everyday thing sure, but it’s not like he’s really had the time or energy to think about magic outside the context of the program.

“DEXO’s whole approach to the spiritualist side of things tends towards the agnostic and well,” Morgan lets out a humorless laugh, “treats it like a bunch of mathematical formulas. If x, then y, and so on. It gets results, which is all they care about.” He tilts his head at Valentine inquiringly. “And what do _you_ think about it?”

Valentine gets the sense that Morgan’s after something in particular but he can’t figure out what, or what it specifically has to do with his whole…situation. “I don’t? Think about it I mean. I like learning how to do things, I guess.” Morgan looks less than impressed with his answer. “I’m good with making talismans?” Valentine hesitantly offers as he shrugs.

“When Dr. Travers brought up your case and mentioned that you were willing to do whatever it took to stay in the program I did some digging,” Morgan says, frowning, “and the general consensus seems to be that you’re highly intelligent and driven and determined to make something of yourself. ” He reclines back in his chair and crosses his arms. “I have to say that I’m not really seeing it.”

This stings Valentine’s pride. “Look I don’t know what you want or what you’re looking for or any of that, I just know that this program is my only chance of getting out of here alive. I did everything I could and now the doctor’s telling me I’m too fucked up from failed augmentations to make the cut and now I’m _here_ and I don’t know _why,_ or why the _fuck_ I should have to prove anything to you.”

Morgan’s eyebrows raise at the use of invective but to Valentine’s surprise he elects to not address it. “You’re here because science will only ever get you so far. You can go another round or ten with those butchers and see where that gets you, or you can try something else.”

“So what, if I just believe super hard in the power of magic I’ll grow another foot and put on thirty pounds of muscle? I’ll un-reject all the biomechanical stuff that didn’t take? If that was even possible then why would they do all those surgeries in the first place! ”

“You have every right to be upset but you’re wasting your time taking it out on me. What I am _trying_ to tell you is, if you’re even half as smart and as driven as people say you are, then—”

“All the magic tricks in the world aren’t going to do me any good if I can’t get medical clearance to get assigned to a goddamn ship!”

“ _Tricks_?” Now Morgan’s getting angry. “This is life and death, as you keep pointing out. This is what’s going to keep you alive when all the supplies and personnel and planning and equipment can’t. What they’re teaching you barely scratches the surface of what’s possible. You’re going to have to do more than just memorize things that have been stripped of all context, you’re going to have to _believe_.”

“Believe _what_? The power was inside me all along?” Valentine knows better, he really does but he just can’t help himself. This guy is fucking _useless_. So’s the doctor for that matter—it would’ve been kinder to tell him there was nothing they could or would do instead of shoving him off on this guy.

Morgan looks like he’s half a second away from throwing his desk lamp at Valentine’s head. “Why anyone thought _children_ would be a good idea…” he growls as he takes a deep breath and buries his face in his hands.

Valentine’s seriously considering just getting up and leaving when Morgan looks back up, eyes sparking as a thought comes to him. “Talismans!” He practically shouts, slamming his palms down on top of his desk as he leans forward. “You’re good with them?”

Inwardly cursing himself for not getting out while the getting was good, Valentine shrugs. “I do alright.”

Morgan rolls his eyes. “Like pulling goddamn teeth. Look you’ve tested some of them right? To make sure they work?”

“The little ones yeah, to like, light candles and stuff. We’re not exactly going monster hunting with them.”

“And yours work?”

Valentine frowns, offended. Of course his talismans work! “ _Yes_.”

“So you _believe_ ,” Morgan stresses the word, “that your talismans will work when you’re making them yes?”

“They work so yeah, sure. I guess I believe they work because they _do_.”

“So what you really believe, is that a specific written sequence of symbols or words will have an effect? Do they work because of the writing on them or because you believe they will? If you write them in a different language, or using different symbols but with the same intent will they have the same effect? What makes a talisman _work_?”

Valentine starts to answer then stops. He’s…not sure.

He doesn’t know. It’s never really come up in class. He’s wondered in an offhand way, why things work the way they do but, he’s starting to realize with a sinking sensation, he’s taken a lot of it for granted. _Oh, that’s what this is all about._ “You’re saying it’s belief.”

Morgan nods.

“But that doesn’t make any sense. If that’s the case then I could just…scribble some shit on a piece of paper, slap it on my forehead and fix everything that’s wrong.”

Morgan laughs, but not unkindly. “Theoretically? Sure. But could you really? Belief is a tricky thing. That’s why talismans exist. They help create a focus, an intent. It’s why some people call upon deities, or use sacred objects. There’s also power in drawing upon the belief of everyone that came before you. Believing in something strongly enough to change the reality of the world we live in, it’s not as easy as it might sound. What you’re being taught…It’s not entirely wrong but it blatantly ignores what makes magic most effective.”

Valentine’s still having a hard time wrapping his head around it but potentially this means… “So you can fix me?”

Morgan shrugs. “Directly? No. I can help but it’s ultimately going to be up to you.”

“ _What_.” Valentine’s starting to think Morgan’s inability to just get to the fucking point must be some sort of medical condition.

“Most of the augmentations are shortcuts and workarounds— practitioners train all their lives to build up a core of power. This core does provide some direct magical energy but it mostly acts as an insulator for when you draw on magical energies outside of yourself. It’s a buffer to prevent corruption and negative influence from malevolent energies but it’s also a regulator so sudden spikes or dips in power don’t adversely affect you.”

Cores? They’ve never talked about cores in class. Valentine hasn’t seen them mentioned in any books either. There’s been some mention of corruption and bad energies, but it’s something that’s been done in a very offhanded sort of way. His teachers have said that there will be more depth information given once they’re ready to undergo the last rounds of augmentations.

“You did take well to some of the gene therapies that strengthened your baseline, but a lot of the biomechanical components didn’t take or aren’t operating at meaningful levels,” Morgan continues after giving Valentine a moment to adjust to his whole world view shifting to accommodate the existence of cores. “The biomechanical components are designed to act as decentralized pseudo cores. When the program was first started there were attempts to create a singular pseudo core but they…didn’t go well.” Morgan looks faintly ill at the thought.

Valentine wonders if Morgan had been directly involved in those experiments or if just hearing about them had been that awful. Considering he’s seen firsthand how bad the program’s failures can be, he can imagine only too well.

“So the concern in your case is that without fully functioning pseudo cores you’ll burn yourself out over time and even with specialized medical support you’ll just become a liability.”

Valentine really wishes that Morgan would just say what he means instead of treating this like a lecture. He’s not here to learn. Whatever he has to do, he’ll do it. “Look, I appreciate the info but I just need you to bottom line this for me. What do I have to do?”

Morgan laughs and shakes his head. “I get it kid, I really do but we’re talking about the rest of your life here, and assuming everything goes right, it’s going to be a long one. Getting you medical clearance is just the start.”

“Then you’ll have plenty of time to tell me all that later,” Valentine argues. “What’s the plan for getting me cleared?”


	10. The Plan

The plan is for Valentine to work on developing his own core and to give up the augmentations as a loss. It’s a risky move but it’s the best one he’s got. Morgan can’t give him an exact timeline but he says they should know fairly quickly if it’ll work or not.

Morgan’s got a theory that the reason the procedures fail so spectacularly with people like Valentine is because they have a strong natural talent for magic that reacts violently to the presence of the pseudo cores. It’s something that can’t really be tested—all other candidates that have had similar reactions to the augmentations have died.

There’s also no reliable way to test for magical abilities which means they can’t pre-screen candidates. Valentine asks how spiritualists even find apprentices then. Morgan explains that magical ability tends to run in families and that accounts for most apprentices. The rest usually fall into one of two groups: people that are interested in magic and seek out practitioners, and the occasional person that is so strongly gifted weird shit just tends to constantly happen in their vicinity. There’s entire sects of spiritualists that specialize in keeping an eye out for the second group as they need to receive at least a basic magical education so they don’t end up hurting themselves or others.

As it turns out the pseudo cores were the real sticking point when it came to spiritualists wanting nothing to do with DEXO. Their stance was that forcibly converting people’s bodies to channel magic was not only interfering with the natural order of things but the process of installing the cores was barbaric, especially given the failure rates.

The people running DEXO on the other hand thought that the spiritualists just needed to get with the times. Why should magic usage be arbitrarily restricted by natural ability? The loss rate was unfortunate but it was something that could be ironed out once the evacuation phase of the Ark Project was completed.

Despite DEXO’s mad science project there’s still not enough spiritualists to meet demand, and there is also a growing concern that magic will effectively be dead as a cohesive practice in a few hundred years. Spiritualist sects are getting split up into different settlements, which will make it difficult if not impossible for them to find and train up enough replacements to keep their numbers from declining. Not to mention their reluctance to train or even associate with members of DEXO.

There will still be the odd wild talent cropping up, and magic won’t cease to exist but centuries of knowledge of how to manipulate it will slowly die out. Mentorship will become a thing of the past. Sacred objects will lose their power, rituals will lose their meaning. Practitioners will no longer be able to base their power upon that of those that came before them, and will be the most meagre of talents compared to what they could have been.

Valentine doesn’t really see what any of this has to do with him. It’s unfortunate for sure but he’s not particularly invested in culture or traditions of magic, and by the time it’s a real concern he’ll probably be long dead, even factoring in his projected extended lifetime.

Morgan seems hellbent on _making_ him care.

He says that real practitioners should be stewards, doing what they can to preserve knowledge and traditions. That’s why Morgan gave up everything, got kicked out of his own sect to go work at DEXO, to wield what little influence he could over the direction of the program.

Valentine gets it in theory but he’s still having a hard time wrapping his brain around the idea that magic is so much more than just a tool.

He wants to tell Gee about cores. It’s right up his alley after all, just another way that DEXO’s managed to screw them over. Not to mention it’d be nice to have someone other than Morgan to talk to about all this. But he worries that sharing what he’s learned would destroy Gee’s newly positive mindset and he just can’t burst that balloon yet. Or maybe ever. He needs Gee to stay hopeful for the future. Gee might seriously lose it if he learns that they’ve all been given the ability to use magic but purposefully denied the knowledge of how it actually works.

The whole core thing, Valentine worries, makes him even more of a freak and an outsider. He’s going to have both pseudo cores and an actual core and no one else (to Morgan’s knowledge at least) is like that. All the failed augmentations and the damage they did make it obvious that he’s not your average kid and while most spiritualists can pass as regular people he really can’t. His scarring is too extensive.

But he’s not going to be able to fake it as a real spiritualist either because there’s the pseudo cores and being associated with DEXO. It’s unlikely that there’s any sects or even lone spiritualists that will willingly associate with him, let alone share proprietary knowledge.

So the trick Morgan says, is to teach Valentine how to develop and maintain a core. He’s got to get to the point where he can safely and reliably channel enough magic to meet the minimum requirements to get assigned to a ship but for the long term he’s going to have to keep working on developing his core. There’s no real cutoff and no reason to stop really, Morgan explains. More power is always going to be better than less, especially considering the unknown challenges he’ll have to deal with out in space. It’s also best practice and how the real spiritualists do it.

The initial lessons are surprisingly disappointing. They’re also boring as fuck. Valentine knows how to meditate, it’s hardly rocket science but Morgan is insistent so they spend all of what Valentine considers to be his extremely valuable free time perfecting his meditation technique. Morgan goes on and on how Valentine’s supposed to feel the magic, the currents of it and the way they move, the internal versus the external. He doesn’t feel anything, other than bored.

It takes a while for Gee to even notice the change in Valentine’s schedule since he himself has been so busy as of late, with his course load picking up. He’s in the last stages of the program now and his teachers are determined to cram as much knowledge into his flight group as possible before they’re sent out.

They’re as closed off from the rest of the world as they ever are but there’s still this palpable sense of urgency. Between the planet rising up against them and groups like Karma that are determined to work against DEXO, one way or another there’s not many flights left that will be making it out.

But Gee, once he does realize that Valentine’s found something to occupy all his free time, teases him relentlessly. He says that Valentine must’ve got himself a girlfriend and that’s why he’s so busy. Valentine _wishes_ he had the time for something so mundane but even if he did he’d be spending it with Gee, not some girl. He tells Gee as much.

Gee just gives him an odd, searching look. Then he laughs awkwardly and says if he honestly had the time and the right lady came along he’d drop Valentine in a heartbeat, no offense. Valentine takes every offense. They’re supposed to be _friends_.

And Gee says that they are friends, absolutely but he’s not _dead,_ geez. And Valentine doesn’t even know how to begin to untangle that.


	11. Core Training

Valentine continues to be shit at meditation, according to Morgan. He still can’t feel the magic. He’s asked Morgan dozens of times now what it’s supposed to feel like but all the man will say is when it happens he’ll just _know_.

In the meantime Valentine gets saddled with an oppressive amount of reading material. Morgan has to fill out all sorts of requisition forms to get access to them on Valentine’s behalf. For his part, Valentine has to sign and initial an ominous sounding contract. It promises all sorts of non specific but incredibly dire consequences should he share the content of the restricted documents (deliberately or otherwise) with his classmates.

The restricted material is everything and anything to do with cores, including unredacted versions of historical texts Valentine’s already read. Morgan explains that while they’re not exactly made available to the general public they normally aren’t so restricted to practitioners. But within the context of how the program is being run having these materials made widely available to all participants would confuse things at best and cause outright chaos at worst.

Knowledge regarding cores is something that’s not normally shared with non practitioners at all. Not only are cores very personal and highly individualized but there’s lots of ways to interfere with them that would be very bad for spiritualists if they widely known.

It’s also an extremely bad idea for people to try and develop cores without proper instruction and supervision. That’s how monsters get made — people have cores that get corrupted by evil influences and in the process become unbalanced and uncontrollable.

And of course the earliest spiritualists didn’t have a system of training or guidance and there were many casualties as they learned how to best channel magic. Now such incidents are something that is fairly rare.

A large portion of Valentine’s assigned reading is personal journals which is really cool. They’re very informal in tone and style and one in particular has some super creative swears and insults that he takes notes on. The author, Tiago Lu, was an itinerant mage that specialized in neutralizing supernatural creatures. Apparently he was very good at his job and in fairly high demand. His journal is full of descriptions of all the different creatures he’d encountered and what it took to take them down. But he was also low key annoyed with everyone all the time so his journal’s also full of rants on how unbearably stupid city officials are. Valentine often finds himself laughing out loud as he reads.

There’s one section where Tiago Lu gets brought in to save this place out in fuck of the middle nowhere and the town council are all fighting each other over who is going to get to marry their daughter off to him. He’s already completely done with all of their shit because the job had been a complete disaster from the start. 

He’d been hired on to take care of this river spirit that was drowning people and as it turned out the spirit was one seriously pissed off ghost of this guy that had died during the recent construction of a bridge. It had collapsed halfway through being built due to a miscalculation precipitated by budget cuts and a rushed timeline and he and three others had been caught underneath. It was a tough exorcism to perform; Lu couldn’t really blame the guy for being upset over his preventable and senseless death but he was also indiscriminately attacking anyone trying to use the bridge so he had to go.

Then the council tried to haggle over his price after he’d taken care of the spirit and if he didn’t already regret taking the job before he definitely did then.

The account abruptly cuts off right in the middle of Lu gearing up to tell the council where they could go and what they could do when they get there. There’s some missing pages then the narrative picks up a few months later and half a continent away. Valentine’s dismayed and disappointed because he really wants to know how that particular misadventure had ended. He skims through the remaining pages in the journal and notices that it’s been pretty heavily edited, to the point of being unreadable given how much it skips around. It’s strange because Morgan had made such a big fuss over getting the unedited versions of things and this journal clearly has large sections that have gone missing.

Valentine mentions the journal to Morgan after their next meditation session which is just as successful as all the ones before it which is to say not at all.

Morgan, who is already filling out his weekly report on Valentine’s progress, pauses his typing mid-sentence and frowns. “Which journal is this?” he asks, faux casually.

“Tiago Lu.”

Morgan’s eyebrows practically disappear into his hairline. “That journal was _not_ one of the ones I requested.”

“It’s really good though! All the other ones have been boring as hell.”

An odd expression crosses Morgan’s face as he pales, then flushes. “What ah, what parts have you read. So far.”

Valentine gives him a quick summary, making sure to emphasize how much he’s learned about the identification and dispatching of different types of supernatural pests. “And then it starts skipping huge chunks. Like there’s this one part where he gets rid of this water spirit that’s not a water spirit then it just cuts to him getting hired to investigate this forest where people keep disappearing. _Then_ it skips to the end of that where he’s getting paid and I thought you said the whole point of all the paperwork was that I’d get the unedited versions of things?”

Morgan looks relieved. “Yes, but that journal shouldn’t have been included. It’s not going to help with developing a core.”

“The guy seems like he was really good at magic though, his journal can’t be a total waste of time.”

Morgan just huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “Trust me, the edited version _has_ everything related to magic. There’s a reason most of the whole back half of it is gone.”

“So you’ve read it then,” Valentine says excitedly. He doesn’t _have_ to read it, he just wants to know what happened after the whole water spirit thing. He half expected Lu to end up punching some officials in the face and having to make a run for it.

Morgan flushes and looks down and away, embarrassed.

_Holy shit_ , Valentine thinks. It must be something good if it’s got Morgan acting all weird about it. “Come on, you gotta tell me what happened.”

“Out,” Morgan says, exasperated but also still flushed with embarrassment. He makes a shooing motion at Valentine, urging him out the door. “Go read a book that’s actually useful since you’re still terrible at meditation.”

Valentine does continue to read through the seemingly endless pile of texts he’s been given but nothing catches his attention the way that Tiago Lu’s journal has. He keeps working on his meditation andtrying to get a sense for magic but he’s still really terrible at it. He can’t help but wonder if part of his problem at this point is just the way his mind keeps circling back to that journal, unable to let it go.

So he tries to negotiate because what does he have to lose and it’s already worked out once in his favor before.

“Hey Morgan, if I finally figure out this meditation thing can you get me the unedited version of that journal?”

Morgan doesn’t quite bang his head against his desk in frustration, but he comes pretty close. “No! Please tell me you’re not still reading that thing. You have a lot more to learn and not much time to do it in, it’s just a distraction that you don’t need.”

“Not knowing what happens _is_ distracting! What if that’s what’s messing up my meditation?”

Morgan gives him a dirty look. “You were having problems long before that journal found its way into your hands.”

“Hey!”

“Have you forgotten what the point of all this is? Are you not sufficiently motivated?”

Valentine knows exactly what’s at stake. It’s always there lurking in the corner of his mind but he does his best to just leave it be, otherwise it’s all too easy to get overwhelmed by the anxiety and the fear that he’s not going to make it. It must show on his face because Morgan shifts from exasperation to concern in an instant.

“Once you get a feel for it, everything else will fall into place, I promise. Normally you’d be able to take your time with it, go at your own speed. Unfortunately…” Morgan looks exhausted, mentally and physically. Valentine often forgets that he also has to oversee the older students, the ones like Gee that are in the last stages of the program.

Those students have cores that are at least functional but they are essentially receiving a whirlwind of a crash course in how to utilize them as the window of time between full core activation and shipping out is incredibly small.

Or so he understands at any rate. Morgan doesn’t say much about it and Gee has been unhelpfully vague although that’s probably partly due to being sworn to confidentiality. Valentine would be hurt that Gee doesn’t share the information with him regardless but considering how much he’s not telling Gee these days, well.

“It’s just hard to focus,” Valentine says for what feels like the hundredth time that day. “I know I’m supposed to be trying to feel the magic or whatever but I can’t sense anything and I’m just sitting there not feeling anything and I really, really want to know how that journal ends!”

Morgan briefly closes his eyes, a pained look crossing his face. “Fine,” he says. “I give up. If anyone catches you reading that thing, you certainly didn’t get it from me.”


	12. The Journal

It takes about a week for Morgan to get ahold of a complete copy of Tiago Lu’s journal, and he can’t even look Valentine in the eye as he wirelessly transfers the file to his tablet. He cancels their next few meditation sessions, says he knows that Valentine’s going to be too caught up in reading to even pretend at any ability to focus. He says that the next time they meet Valentine had better be ready to put in his best effort.

The next few days are a blur as Valentine marathon reads the journal, mechanically moving between the dorms, the exercise yard, the classrooms, the dining hall in his regularly scheduled loops.

The conclusion to the river spirit escapade is beyond anything he could’ve imagined. As it turns out the village council had withheld payment, claiming they had issues accessing the funds. It was an all too transparent attempt to extend Lu’s stay until they could convince him to marry at least one of their daughters. Lu had been fully prepared to just say fuck it and give up the payment as a loss but then he was approached by the youngest son of one of the councilmen.

The young man, Sasha, had used his father’s credentials to withdraw Lu’s payment. He’d brought Lu his money and in return he’d asked if he could accompany him on his travels. Lu agreed then told him to go pack. While Sasha was busy packing Lu deliberately left him behind.

It’s cold hearted, even for Lu and Valentine is shocked. He’s in his bunk with the blanket pulled up over his head to hide the light from the tablet and he eagerly skims ahead trying to find any sort of reason for Lu’s appalling betrayal.

Sasha is young, recently turned twenty and he just stole a large amount of money. Lu is worried that if he takes Sasha with him the council will send someone after them for the stolen funds. He doesn’t want that sort of trouble and he also seems to be very uncomfortable with the idea of traveling with a devastatingly handsome young man that is nearly 15 years his junior.

_For a guy that isn’t very descriptive unless he’s talking shop he sure does spend a lot of time writing about Sasha’s looks_ , Valentine thinks.

But he still doesn’t understand why someone had decided that any of this needed to be edited from the journal. Sure it shows Lu in a bad light but so does a lot of the journal, the guy was a grumpy asshole.

Valentine keeps reading, hoping that he’ll be able to figure it out.

On the way to the next job Sasha catches up with Lu. Lu is exasperated but also oddly flattered. Valentine gets the sense that he’s really thrown off by the fact that Sasha doesn’t seem to hold a grudge over getting left behind.

If anything it only seems to fuel his admiration for Lu.

_What a weirdo_ , Valentine thinks. He drifts off to sleep halfway through Lu’s manifesto on how he just can’t seem to shake Sasha loose and the kid’s got a big enough crush on him that it can practically be seen from space and every time he tries to push him away it’s like kicking a puppy.

The next day Valentine’s even more distracted than he’s already been. Lu complains and complains about Sasha but gives up on trying to ditch him and instead decides teach him what he knows. He claims his change of heart is because Sasha’s stubborn refusal to be sidelined puts them both in danger.

Sasha proves to be a quick study and an able assistant. He also seems to be oddly charmed by Lu’s complete lack of charm.

Lu continues to go on and on about Sasha’s looks to the point of being…well, borderline obsessive. It’s not particularly flattering, more just constant complaining about how distracting Sasha’s eyes are, or how his hair is just a touch too long and is even softer than it looks.

_Wait how does he know how soft Sasha’s hair feels_ , Valentine wonders.

It all comes to a head during an incident where Lu almost dies. He very nearly gets the shit clawed out of him by a perfectly normal bear, of all things. But Sasha manages to grab the sword that he’d dropped and by some miracle manages to hamstring the bear with his first swing and stab it through the throat with his second.

That’s when the journal takes a surprising and pornographic turn as Lu gets into some very granular detail about how grateful he is to Sasha and the methods in which he chooses to express his gratitude.

Valentine flails in an effort to switch the tablet off. He’s sweating and his heart is racing. He can’t seem to catch his breath and _oh god,_ he thinks. _This is why it was edited,_ and _Morgan knows_.

He’s _never_ going to be able to look Morgan in the eye again.

Now that he’s got his answer, Valentine’s not sure what to do. He’s still got about a week until his next meditation session with Morgan. He could finish the journal. But he doesn’t really need to, he’s pretty definitively got his answer on why the journal was edited so heavily in the first place.

Which would mean…

_Holy shit_.

He’s never made much of an effort to seek out porn. It’s always seemed like more hassle than it was worth, his imagination works just fine on the rare instances he’s actually in the mood and not passing out the second he lies down in his bunk. But this, this practically fell into his lap. It feels like it would be a waste to _not_ finish the journal.

He decides to wait at least until he’s got some privacy before picking the journal back up again. Now that he has a pretty good idea of what’s in store it’s not something he really feels comfortable skimming through during his classes.

The next time he has lunch with Gee is unusually awkward. He can’t really tell Gee about the journal but he wants to, if only because not having anyone to talk to about it is just killing him. He’s certainly not going to discuss it with Morgan.

He often relies on Gee to carry the conversation but today Gee’s unusually quiet, contemplative even as he takes small unenthusiastic bites of his lunch. The meals at the center have been aggressively adequate to date but Valentine can’t even guess at what the meat portion is supposed to be, it’s so overcooked and dry despite being drowned in a greasy and unappetizingly gray sauce.

Valentine starts and stops a few times, trying to find something to say. He very much wants things to be normal but he’s not going to get any help from Gee and he’s having a difficult time corralling his thoughts away from the journal. He startles quite badly when Gee finally does speak.

“You ok?” he asks, gently nudging Valentine’s shoulder with his own. Valentine chokes on a bite of overcooked and incredibly limp green beans.

Valentine nods, a bit frantic as his eyes water. “Fantastic,” he wheezes. Gee laughs. He raises a hand as if to pound on Valentine’s back and raises an inquiring eyebrow. Valentine shakes his head and waves him off.

“Sorry about that,” Gee says. “Was trying to make up for being shitty company, not trying to kill you.”

Valentine nods, still trying to catch his breath. “Everything okay?” he croaks.

Gee smiles that small smile of his, the one that’s warm and genuine and not the big showy one he uses to keep everyone else at arms’ length. It’s not that the way he is with everyone else is so completely different but with Valentine he’s less bluster, more intensity. “It’s just really hitting me lately I guess. It’s really happening, you know? And I’m ready, I want to get out of here but at the same time I’m not.” He laughs self consciously, runs a hand through his hair. “Guess I’m not making much sense huh?”

Valentine shakes his head. “No man, I get it.” He gets this feeling that Gee’s talking about the cores, and he wishes not for the first time that he could tell Gee that he _knows_ , that it’s something they can talk about. His fingers itch with the impulse to reach out and touch Gee, to give him a reassuring pat on the arm or something but he’s never really been good with initiating contact. Gee’s the tactile one, it’s like breathing to him the way he’s always casually reaching out.

Valentine tries to make an effort to reciprocate but it’s never casual for him the way it is for Gee, it’s always calculated and recalculated and more often than not he talks himself out of it.

The moment passes him by and they make small talk, winding their way around the things they’re not allowed to say.

When Valentine does pick the journal back up he’s half anticipatory, half anxious about it. He can’t help but be curious but at the same time he wonders if Lu ever thought someone would end up reading what he wrote or if he’d always intended his journal to be private. Valentine certainly wouldn’t want anyone reading about his personal life but he also thinks he’d never write any of that down in the first place.

Lu is still very prickly about most things and he still complains endlessly about Sasha but it’s very obvious that he’s got a soft spot for the kid that’s a mile wide. He goes on and on about how Sasha could be doing anything with his life but instead he’s dedicated himself to being Lu’s partner in every sense of the word.

Then there’s the sex bits. They start off being to the point and explicit but as time goes on Lu’s writing on the topic becomes oddly poetic. He writes about how their cores seem to be in sync and how what they do with their bodies seems to echo the flow of magic through a core and it’s, well. It’s still incredibly filthy but almost worse, the way Lu goes on and on about how what they do together feels like the best kind of magic.

Valentine can’t help but feel jealous. Not about the mind blowing sex although that stings in an abstract sort of way but he still can’t figure out how to even sense magic properly let alone channel it through his core. Lu makes it all sound incredible and it all seems so far out of reach.

He finishes the journal but there’s no satisfaction to be had. In a few more days it’s going to be time for meditation with Morgan again and he’s just dreading it. Morgan knows what’s in the journal and he knows that Valentine’s read it and shit is just going to be weird.


	13. Barriers

Valentine’s next meditation session is beyond awkward but Morgan takes pity on him, doesn’t so much as mention the journal. He also, mercifully, doesn’t even call him out for being twitchy as hell and utterly unable to concentrate. He just lets Valentine be and gently suggests some texts to read on alternative meditation methods.

Valentine can’t tell if the perpetual cloud of shame he’s living under is due to his being an absolute failure at developing a core or how all the worst bits of the journal feel like they’re constantly scrolling across a 50 foot marquee at the back of his brain.

He really is trying, harder than he ever has before to reach out. To touch the currents of magic that are literally right in front of his face according to Morgan who says that magic is everywhere, especially concentrated around living beings. But he just can’t focus.

He can’t shake the looming sense of impending failure. He’s felt the pressure of having a hard deadline for months now and he’s had the odd late night/early morning panic attack over it, heart racing and gasping for breath.

He feels so desperately alone.

He wants to tell Gee about it, he _needs_ to tell Gee. Valentine’s scared that he’s not going to make it. He’s broken and he’s trying to fix himself but there’s just not enough _time_.

But knowing what he does now it’s hard to even be around Gee. He’s got secrets that feel too big for his skin and that damned journal… He’s hyperaware now every time they touch and it feels like sparks lighting up his insides and he wonders if maybe that’s the magic being channeled through Gee’s pseudo cores or is it just his stupid brain remembering the worst most embarrassing parts of that journal.

He knows that they’re not like Lu and Sasha, they’re just good friends, best friends even. Gee is kind and patient where Lu was prickly and brusque and Valentine sure as hell isn’t anything like Sasha. Sasha was so clingy and starry eyed and his whole world revolved around Lu. Valentine is very much his own person and sure his future plans include Gee but in a ‘friends make adventures more fun’ kind of way.

But his stupid, stupid brain can’t help but wonder. What would it be like. Not just being able to feel magic but to share it, share everything down to his innermost being with another person. To be that close.

Gee notices that he’s being weird and says as much but Valentine can’t explain. How could he. Gee’s just as tactile as he always is but now Valentine’s an aroused and confused mess from all the casual touching and he just can’t cope. He wishes his brain would just shut the fuck up sometimes.

Instead it goes to all the wrong places and he finds himself angrily jerking off, hating everything. He wishes he’d never come across that damned journal. Why did Morgan have to let him read it? Why can’t he talk to Gee about cores and about magic? He can’t help but think if he could just _talk_ to Gee, really talk about all the things that matter maybe Gee would know just the thing to say, what to _do_. He’d know how to fix Valentine and his stupid broken brain.

***

They’re back on talismans in his afternoon class and Valentine’s struggling to stay awake because at this point he could write and activate them in his sleep. He doesn’t understand why his classmates are having such a hard time. They’re all hopelessly slow.

He falls asleep on his desk and is prodded awake an indeterminate amount of time later. The instructor tells him if he’s got time to nap then he’s got time to get off his ass and help his classmates. He does so, reluctantly. He can feel the resentment pouring off them in waves, their growing irritation at his showing them all up.

He's not even sure how it comes up later but he mentions the incident to Morgan who just stares at him.

“What?” Valentine takes a quick glance down, wondering if he’s wearing some of his lunch again. It’s not so much that he’s a messy eater as a distracted one but he doesn’t appear to have had any mishaps today.

“You’re working on barrier talismans?” Morgan’s got this weird look on his face.

“Yeah.”

“Testing them?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Valentine drawls, stretching the word out. Had Morgan not been listening to him again?

“And you activated yours, no problem while the rest of your classmates struggled?”

“Okay you’re doing that thing again where you think I’m being an idiot and you’re trying to rub my face in it,” Valentine grumbles. Morgan can get downright bitchy when he thinks Valentine’s missing something that should be obvious.

Morgan huffs and shakes his head, disbelieving.

“What!?”

“I thought you said you couldn’t detect magic.”

“I can’t,” Valentine confirms testily. He gets it, he’s fucked up somewhere, Morgan can stop trying to make him feel like shit about it any time now.

“Your classmates are having problems because their pseudo cores haven’t been activated yet. Magic use isn’t impossible without a core but it’s difficult. Talismans are a good place to start because they don’t need much power to activate.”

“Okay,” Valentine says, not getting it at all.

Morgan sighs explosively and buries his face in his hands. “You’ve been using magic. You know, the thing you’ve been saying you can’t feel for _literal months_ now.”

_Oh_. He’s been using magic. _Fuck_.

He can’t believe he didn’t notice. Granted, the way the program is designed his teachers use a lot of fancy wordplay and talking around the fact that magic is even a thing - spiritualists instead of magicians, ghosts are spirits, monsters are paranormal beings, spoken word talismans instead of incantations, spiritual energy reservoirs instead of objects of power or magical artifacts and so on. They try to make it sound all scientific and measurable and reasonable and nothing at all like something straight out of a fantasy novel.

Morgan throws first a pad of sticky notes and then a ballpoint pen at him. Valentine catches them, confused.

“Barrier talisman, let’s go,” Morgan gestures impatiently at him.

“These aren’t the right paper,” Valentine says, faintly scandalized. His teachers have repeatedly stressed the importance of using the correct paper and inks and writing utensils, and what he’s currently got in his hands most certainly isn’t it.

“Haven’t you learned anything from reading all those journals? Vengeful spirits trying to rip you apart aren’t going to just stand to one side and wait while you get out the good paper and a dip pen.”

He’s…not wrong but Valentine can’t help inwardly cringing as he sketches out the forms for a barrier talisman with a cheap scratchy pen on a fluorescent pink square.

He peels the sheet off the rest of the stack and it sticks to his fingers. It feels like sacrilege as he activates the talisman. The barrier flares to life in a hazy shimmer.

Morgan nods once, slowly, then stands, pushing his chair out from behind his desk. He makes his way over to where Valentine’s seated at his usual spot on the worn out sofa pushed up against the far wall of the office. He pokes gingerly at the barrier with a pointed finger, testing it. The barrier holds.

“Nice work,” he says. “Solid.”

Valentine suppresses the urge to grin. Compliments from Morgan are rare, and it is a damn good barrier if he does say so himself. He carefully tears the talisman in two, dissolving the barrier.

“So that’s it,” Morgan says. “What you’re looking for when you meditate, you want to reach for what it feels like when you activated that talisman.”

But it didn’t feel like _anything_. It’s like telling him to concentrate on breathing, or blinking. It’s a thing that happens when he thinks about it but it’s not a sensation he can really pin down, it just _is_.

He feels like the worst kind of failure. He was so proud just a minute ago but that feeling is pushed further and further away as he realizes that he can’t wrap his brain around this simple thing. “I-” To his utter humiliation his face grows hot and his eyes fill with unshed tears. “I _can’t_.”

Morgan’s usually stern face softens as he lets out a thoughtful hum. He goes to rummage around in the filing cabinets behind his desk and Valentine takes the opportunity to quickly scrub at his eyes.

Gee had constantly teased him about his tendency to cry at the drop of the hat until Valentine had finally had enough and told him that it wasn’t funny and he was being cruel. Gee had apologized over and over, gathered him up in one of those overwhelming, smothering hugs of his. He’d said it just meant that the place hadn’t got to Valentine yet, that it meant he was still able to _feel_ something instead of being dead inside like the rest of them.

Valentine had laughed as he cried and said tearily into the warm expanse of Gee’s chest that he wished he could feel less. Gee just squeezed him even tighter, saying “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Morgan finds what he was looking for after making a complete mess, papers and journals and magical artifacts carelessly tossed aside into haphazard piles. He waves Valentine over, holds the object out for him to take. It’s a small golden sphere, maybe three inches in diameter, perfectly smooth with no visible markings or seams.

It fits perfectly into the palm of Valentine’s hand, cool to the touch. He doesn’t know what to make of it and looks up at Morgan inquiringly.

“It’s barely more than a toy, but it’ll work for our purposes,” Morgan explains. “It lights up. Go on, give it a try.”

_How_ , Valentine wants to ask. Then, _oh_. Right. Magic. He takes a deep breath, concentrates on the sphere.

Nothing happens.

Nothing continues to happen and Valentine’s ears grow hot with embarrassment. _Goddamn it_.

The air conditioning cuts on with a hum, gently stirring the papers piled on top of Morgan’s desk and the leaves of the mostly dead potted palm shoved into a poorly lit corner.

“You’ve got to get out of your own head kid,” Morgan gently chides him. “Stop trying to force it.”

Valentine wants to scream.

The sphere flares brightly, blinding. He squeezes his eyes shut to block it out but it’s still so bright through his eyelids, like blinking against the sun.


End file.
